<p>I am trying to help my daughter (high school junior) to start choosing colleges to visit. I am totally new to this! She is currently ranked 1 in her class, 4.0 GPA with some AP classes. This does not include a calculus class taken over the summer through the local community college. Her SAT scores are 1850. She is also in a biomedical program through our school systems technical school. She is waiting to hear about acceptance to a National Cancer Institute intern program. Her extracurriculars include NHS, SGA, National Technical Honor Society, Student Ambassador for her technical school, Skills USA, Participation in Leadership programs through the local Rotary club, It's Academic Team, Varsity Swimming, year round Club Swimming, and monthly volunteering for the Parents Day Out Program for our local ARC. She knows she wants to pursue some sort of medical field, or medical research. We live in close proximity to Baltimore and DC. She wants to stay within 3 hours or so from home. Swimming in college is a must for her. She is a good swimmer but does not have any state cuts. We are not sure of the process of how to start the search with swimming being one of her musts. Should she begin to contact coaches first to see where she may be eligible to swim within the schools that offer majors that reflect her interest? Also, hoping for merit scholarships, as we have not saved as well as we should have, and our combined income is a little over 100 thousand so I am assuming she will not qualify for need based scholarships or financial aid. Any advice or suggestions on how to get started would be appreciated.</p>
<p>Start with a good search engine like <a href=“https://www.collegeboard.org/”>https://www.collegeboard.org/</a>. You can say you want swimming, near maryland, etc. </p>
<p>Your daughter will likely qualify for FA if she attends a private or OOS school. Use an
EFC calculator like <a href=“https://fafsa.ed.gov/FAFSA/app/f4cForm?execution=e1s1”>https://fafsa.ed.gov/FAFSA/app/f4cForm?execution=e1s1</a> to give you an idea of what your EFC is. </p>
<p>Your best opportunities for scholarship will be where your daughter is above the norms for GPA and SAT scores. You can get those from collegeboard as well. </p>
<p>Your best opportunities for FA will be for more selective schools. </p>
<p>GL. </p>
<p>I’d be careful about making swimming a major priority if it means compromising on everything else including major, academic level of school, atmosphere of school, etc. The kids I’ve seen do this usually end up unhappy and/or transferring. For example, one young lady I know chose her school based on wanting to continue her sport. It was several academic notches below what she would have picked without the sport being a factor. Socially, it was an awful fit, but she was convinced she had to continue the sport on a team and wouldn’t consider club or intramurals. She’s now in the process of transferring.
Would she consider club or intramural swimming? How much is she willing to give up so she can swim? </p>
<p>College coaches will want to know her swim times for all her events, and some teams even post minimum qualifying times on their athletic websites. There will be a lot of colleges that also have a swim club level team, which would be more fun/less stress, but would not provide any athletic scholarship. Head to the athletic website of potential colleges and fill out a form that lets them know you are interested. </p>
<p>collegeswimming.com will let you see the team roster and the times from recent meets. This can let you know if your daughter has the times needed to pursue swimming for a college. There is a forum on cc about Athletic Recruiting that has helped me develop a better understanding of college swimming. </p>
<p>Best of luck to you!</p>
<p>Thanks for the information. Regarding swimming, I don’t think she is willing to compromise and do swimming as an intramural or club.She has been swimming since she was nine and has recently set her goal as continuing in college. Certainly there must be good match schools for her that will also provide her an opportunity to continue her sport. I just don’t know how to help her coordinate matching an appropriate school with opportunity to swim. How does the recruitment process work? Is there try-outs?How does it tie into the admission process? Also, how does the merit based scholarship opportunities impact work with the entire process?</p>
<p>Re: swimming recruiting. <a href=“Athletic Recruits - College Confidential Forums”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/athletic-recruits/</a></p>
<p>Run a search in this forum and you will find links to sites dedicated to swimming recruiting. The site powercropper posted above is perfect. I know almost nothing about the recruiting, but worry that doesn’t have state cuts. Has she been to Y Nats?</p>
<p>Once you have found schools to consider, you can look at a school’s athletic website and see if a school needs a distance swimmer or a breast stroker, etc, by looking at the graduating year of the current competitors. </p>
<p>Also, her SAT score is completely out of line with her GPA and class rank. Has she tried the ACT? If not, you may want to look at test-optional schools. </p>
<p>Are you MD or VA residents? Both offer some wonderful in-state opportunities at very attractive in-state prices.</p>
<p>You might look at the “College Search” Tool right here on College Confidential. On the left side, you can put in various criteria, such as geographical location, size of school, a sport, etc, and it will pop up with a list of schools that meet your criteria. We used this a lot when my son was looking for a soccer school. Soccer was a must for him, but it had to be at a school that was a good fit for him academically. We were able to find the perfect fit for him. Definitely don’t give up on the swimming if that is important to your D, but just make sure the academics are a good fit also!</p>
<p>Yes, we were concerned her SAT scores were not good. She has not completed any sort of SAT prep due to scheduling with both high school swimming and club swimming. We realize SAT prep needs to be a priority. she will register for ACT. We reside in a small town in Maryland,. Not a lot of opportunity or guidance assistance at her small rural high school. </p>
<p>Since you mentioned money is an issue, you need to get her to focus on prepping for the standardized test. Her GPA will qualify her for merit aid, but her SAT will disqualify her. She needs to have both in order to receive the largest awards.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t have her take the ACT unless she preps for it. College Board has their blue book and ACT has their red book, and both are excellent resources, but she needs to carve time out to use them. She should sit and complete several full-length practice tests before sitting for the real exam.</p>
<p>I assume you know of St. Mary’s, the public honors college in MD. They have a swim team but I haven’t looked at times or anything.
<a href=“General - St. Mary's College of Maryland”>http://www.smcmathletics.com/sports/wswimming/index</a></p>
<p>Thanks for the info. St. Mary’s College is the only college she has toured. Her swim times are compatible with the swimmers there. She seemed interested in St. Mary’s but we would like her to check out some more options.</p>
<p>I only mentioned it b/c of the in-state tuition. If finances are of concern, the in-state schools in MD are great options.</p>
<p>Check out the athletic recruiting forum I linked above and the college swimming site powercropper linked, and then perhaps return here with questions.</p>
<p>Make sure the college choice is one that your DD would love…minus the swimming. It’s more important for that to be true first. Ask, “Would I be happy here, if I wasn’t swimming anymore”?</p>
<p>If she’s a disciplined student, and it sure sounds like she is, she should be able to pick a good SAT prep-book and do just fine to improve her score. A number of parents on these threads pay for expensive tutoring–and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that–but I worry that it’s to the detriment of communicating the benefit of what a hard-working student and a good prep book can pull off (for a fraction of the price!)</p>
<p>I would have her start by thinking about the type of campus environment she wants: urban, suburban or rural. Some kids just a feel for what there college should be. Also, with grades like hers, I would encourager her to practice the SAT questions in the College Board to see if she can’t get that SAT up a bit, it could increase her options. College Swimming could be a challenge without state cuts. DI is pretty competitive. She may want to look at some DIII schools to see if they seem attractive to her. Best of luck. </p>
<p>4.0 HS GPA with high test scores can pick up a large merit scholarship:
<a href=“Automatic Full Tuition / Full Ride Scholarships - #286 by BobWallace - Financial Aid and Scholarships - College Confidential Forums”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1348012-automatic-full-tuition-full-ride-scholarships-p20.html</a>
<a href=“Competitive Full Tuition / Full Ride Scholarships - #46 by ucbalumnus - Financial Aid and Scholarships - College Confidential Forums”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1461983-competitive-full-tuition-full-ride-scholarships-p4.html</a></p>
<p>Some kids are just not great test takers. If that’s the case here, studying and practice could help. But I also think it is possible that the great gpa reflects lack of challenging hs college curriculum at the hs. if so, college academics would require a big shift - keep that in mind when planning coursework, especially during swim season. I don’t have any college athletes, but it seems like it would require a lot of juggling. </p>